Show HN: Twilert – Emails in real time when your brand is mentioned on Twitter

https://www.twilert.com

by joshmcmillan • 12 years ago

60 20 12 years ago

jawns• 12 years ago

I've been using Twilert for at least a year now, and it works fairly well.

It should be noted, though, that the basic functionality that Twilert provides -- email alerts when a particular word or phrase appears in a tweet -- is pretty trivial to roll on your own using the Twitter API.

extesy• 12 years ago

I don't know their implementation but I can think of two workarounds for the firehose issue:

1. Paid approach: use some authorized firehose data resellers. That's expensive, but if there are already thousands of users, that will pay off.

2. Free approach: use poll-based solution to search for the keyword every X seconds/minutes. When new tweet appears in the search results after the last recorded tweet - that's your new tweet. This way it shouldn't miss anything and you don't need firehose. Of course, to overcome request throttling limits, you'll need to use multiple different credentials.

danmaz742• 12 years ago

[Plug alert]If you'd like a deeper analysis that doesn't cost a fortune, you can try our Hashtag Intelligence: http://www.cybranding.com [/Plug alert]

jaysonelliot• 12 years ago

That's one of the best user experiences I've seen for explaining a service to new users.

The very first thing I saw was a clear sentence explaining exactly what Twilert was and why I should care. If I were the exploring type, I could scroll through a lot more, but the big "Try it now" button was inviting, and it delivered just what it promised.

The UI for trying out a search was actually fun, and the live preview feedback was fast and confidence-building. I knew where I was and where I was going, thanks to the breadcumbs at the top, and every step delivered a clear value exchange as it led me down the funnel.

By the time I reached the point where I could authenticate with Twitter and start using the service, I'd been shown what Twilert was, how it worked, and what I could expect. You hooked me in.

Expertly done. I'm going to use this as an example for others who want to know how to lead people from awareness to engagement smoothly and quickly.

Sir_Cmpwn• 12 years ago

I'm wondering if this would get out of control as your company grows.

unfunco• 12 years ago

I think it would. All this is doing is shifting data from an optimised UI to an unoptimised UI. Performing a search on Twitter and selecting all tweets, and every now and then hitting the load new tweets button is free and easy, compared with sifting through emails, and $19 a month.

xerophtye• 12 years ago

Perhaps it needs to be coupled with some sentiment analysis, so that only get instant emails for more urgent cases, where a user is unhappy 9 or severely unhappy, depending on your preferences). As for the good tweets, they can perhaps send a summary once a day.

meritt• 12 years ago

I thought Twitter's API only gave you access to a small percentage of real-time tweets. Did Twilert obtain full firehose access or is another method being used?

dblacc• 12 years ago

Its probably the firehose via one of the two data providers, is why the service isn't free. Datasift is one of said providers, can't remember the name of the other.

me_bx2• 12 years ago

Gnip is the other one. It was recently acquired by twitter though: https://blog.twitter.com/2014/twitter-welcomes-gnip-to-the-f...

danmaz742• 12 years ago

If you want to get "general" data (without a search) you can only get a small sample - that's what we use for hashtagify.me - but it's also possible to download pretty much all tweets for a specific search. Without guarantees, of course!

me_bx2• 12 years ago

The 'sample' streaming API endpoint indeed provides you with a small percentage of all tweets.

However, the 'filter' endpoint gives you access to all tweets matching to your search, up to a certain limit. Unless you're tracking very commonly used words or brands like 'selfie' or 'ipad', you're likely to get all tweets you are interested in without ever reaching the limit.

cf. https://dev.twitter.com/docs/faq#6861

Also, the API limits are per authenticated user, not per app.

grimtrigger2• 12 years ago

Built one of these for Reddit. No realtime yet but its on the way http://getredditalerts.com

650REDHAIR• 12 years ago

What's holding you back from making it realtime? My #/twitter handle is the same as my HN name if you'd like to talk about it.

grimtrigger2• 12 years ago

No reason except I wanted to launch as early as possible and then focus on marketing. I want to put the instant notification on a paid tier, and that'll take some time to build out. Email me at aakil@getredditalerts.com. Would be happy to talk more.

highace• 12 years ago

The UI is excellent but it's hard to justify $19 a month for this. Just have a Tweetdeck tab open, then you can reply to the tweets too.

mehdim• 12 years ago

Mention.com do it for all Social networks, and cheaper.

gdelente• 12 years ago

Social networks and everything else.

hnriot• 12 years ago

tried it and the results seemed random. I entered a well known brand and got a tweet for baby aylesbury ducks that have absolutely nothing to do with my search. I looked at the tweet and the whole timeline & profile for the user and failed to find the keyword anywhere!

aside from the results being random it's an interesting idea. Better still if it tracked sentiment and charted it over time for me.

lpinca• 12 years ago

It's nice, but why should i pay for this when i can write a simple bot that runs 24/7 and does the same thing for free? At least add a free plan.

Show HN: Twilert – Emails in real time when your brand is mentioned on Twitter

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